[wl]

A lot of people will tell you to study for the technician exam, take the test, and buy a Baofeng handheld radio. The end result of that is usually that the new licensee keys up a local repeater a few times, doesn't find a community they want to be a part of, and the radio collects dust.

Instead, I suggest finding local ham clubs and seeking out experience with different parts of the hobby. Find people who chase DX (long distance contacts) on shortwave. Find the contesters, people who compete to see who can make the most contacts meeting some condition in a given period of time. Find the parks/summits on the air people, who go to parks and summits to set up portable stations and make contacts. Find the fox hunters, people who compete to find hidden radio beacons. Find the people with VHF/UHF rovers, vans with bit directional antennas mounted. Find people who communicate with satellites. Find people who bounce signals off the moon.

If your experience with any of that excites you for more, study for your license and dive in. I'd highly recommend getting your general class license instead of technician. It's not all that much harder to get and it opens up the shortwave bands.

[rpcope1]

As someone who listens but doesn't transmit, some of the most fun is actually chasing shortwave pirates around 6.950 MHz. There are a lot of fun radio shows that people put on, and I guess the FCC doesn't seem to care too much what happens below 40m. It might take some of the fun out of it, but it would be really cool to see some of that legalized as a form of amateur non-commercial music broadcast.